How did I come into being? I discarded the question as unanswerable temporarily. What was I before that instant I suddenly reasoned _cogito, ergo sum_? I could not say. How did I know I even existed, really? Obviously because I was capable of rational thought. But what was thinking? First it was perceiving and accepting my own existence; beyond that, it was recognizing the dark nothingness around me and the forces it contained. I had to exist. But how did I know nothingness was right? And how did I know its darkness was right? And how did I know the waves of force were _waves_ and _force_? And how did I know matter was _matter_ and that I was none of these? "Symbols," I reasoned. "I'm thinking in symbols. I could not reason without symbols; therefore I could not exist as I am without symbols to think with." Yet whose symbols were they? Where and how did I come by them? I could think back clearly to the instant of my creation, yet I had not invented the symbols in the interim of my existence, nor had they been given to me. What then? They were part of me when I came alive in this universe, had been _invented_ some other time and elsewhere by someone else or by what I was before I became the entity of reason I now was. Then that first flash of perception in nothingness was not spontaneous. There was something behind it. I was something before that moment, in another era of time, perhaps a creature of substance. But what? I concentrated. I remembered the symbol _Marl_. I was or had been an entity _Marl_. Were there others back there, somewhere? There must have been, must be yet. Was I the only _Marl_ who metamorphosed into this state of rational entity? Surely not. Yet I could contact no other rationale around me as far away as I could probe. How far was that? How could I know. Was it far enough to reach the other _Marls_, or were they scattered thinly throughout infinity around me like the flecks of mass? I was suddenly ill. The symbol _malaise_ came to me as the proper description of my malady. I grew dizzy with my sickness. I wished to regurgitate, to cast off this cold, frightening sensation. Yet I was provided with no physical means of doing it. It filled me throughout all my thinking. It was I. I thought to exist. I thought depression, sickness. Therefore I was the malady and it was a hell of malcontent beyond symbolical description. What was wrong with me? I was frightened. I was concerned for my existence here alone. What was it called? The idea shimmered there on the fringe of perception, then fairly leaped into my consciousness. Existing alone as pure reason was worse than no-existence, was worse than dying or never having been at all. I need another _Marl_. To exist happily, I must have at least one other _Marl_ to communicate with, to share my thoughts, to share my being.